Testing the Hypothesis

      An opportunity that many companies have passed in the education technology sector, and my company I am a founder of is based on, is a software that enables students to utilize their personal devices in the classroom as well as creating a bridge between the their devices and the teachers computer. Currently schools face the problem of not having a good solution to the incorporation of personal devices in the classroom. Either schools outright ban the use of these devices or let the students run rampant.
     Before starting on the coding and funding stages of the company, we had talked to many people involved in the school system to ask them about their opinions. I talked with many teachers that taught vastly different subjects, as well as the administrators and even principal of my high school From this we found out that the only competitor to our solution is a company that changes the administrator permissions on every students phones and is a hassle to use. We had also realized from talking to the teachers, that even though our school was BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) many teachers kept their students from using their devices in fear of them using them for non-academic purposes.

Interviews

1. High School Math Teacher: Mr Ebbert
1. Mr. Ebbert is the teacher that gave me the idea for my company in the first place. While using my calculator in his math class, he sent me to the principals office and made me question how teachers could know what their students are doing on their personal devices. While talking with him, he said that his ideal monitoring solution wouldn't be intensive on the teacher and would very streamlined and easy to use so that way the teacher would need to take very little time to see what their students were doing on their devices. Since he was a math teacher, he only allowed his students to use the physical calculators that the schools provided to them, which he complained created huge spending and diverted funds away from more critical areas 
2. High School Principal: Mr. Moyer
1. Mr. Moyer was my high school principal all four years. After coming up with my idea for my product, I stopped by his office after school ended one day and told him about it. He said that a product that functioned as I imagined, would help schools save money as well as reducing distractions from phones in the class. He envisioned that since students would be using their phones for productive, they wouldn't be able to use them for social media and other distractions. 
3. Director of Information Technology for Volusia County: Michael Cicchetti
1. Mr. Chicchetti is on the Volusia County Public school board and manages most of the instructional and educational technology that enters into the Volusia County School system. I was lucky enough to ask Mr Moyer to referral me to him. I met him in his office and we talked about the potential of my project. After hearing my pitch he offered that when my program was finished, he would offer to pilot it in 3 schools. Also from the conversation, we talked much more about the technical side of the software and how it could work in the school system, which I wont discuss here for confidentiality's sake. 
4. Middle School Science Teacher: Mr. Dimuro
1. Mr Dimuro was my science teacher in 8th grade and had seldom contact with him ever since moving to high school. However, one day at a TJ Maxx I ran into him and told him about my idea and asked for his input and thoughts. His insight was valuable because before this, I hadnt considered that my product could apply to middle schools because I wasn't sure how big of a problem phones we in middle school, and that they would have such a need for the product. 
5. Middle School Principal:  Mr.Dunagan 
1. I was referraled to Mr. Dunagan by Mr. Dimuro after our talk and came back to the middle school that I went to for an afternoon to pitch my idea to him. He definitely saw the need for such a product because the school was attempting to focus towards its STEM program, but had insufficient funds. However, he felt that our product would be able to eliminate spending on physical technologies such as calculators and computers since the students phones are more powerful and can use the same tools. He also urged me to focus strongly, when talking to principals and superintendents, to focus on the savings that my product would be able to offer.